Reuters World News - The town threatened by a melting glacier

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

 As world leaders, environmental groups and private industry meet at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, residents of planet Earth are already doing what they can to adapt to a transformed world. On today's episode, our correspondent travels to one remote village at the foot of a glacier in northern Pakistan to see how they are trying to defend themselves from devastating glacial flooding. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As world leaders, environmental groups and private industry meet at the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai, residents of planet Earth are already doing what they can to adapt to a transformed world. On today's episode, our correspondent travels to one remote village at the foot of a glacier in northern Pakistan to see how they're trying to defend themselves from devastating glacial flooding.

I'm Charlotte Greenfield and Hunza, Northern Pakistan. And I'm Kim Vinal in London. I'm walking on the Shisper Glacier, which is in the far north of Pakistan. Just ahead of me is Tariq Jamil. He's a 51-year-old local, and he's trying to measure some of the movement of the ice, whilst also taking some photos on a camera. I've come up here with Tariq because I'm trying to understand the efforts that he's undergoing to understand the risks from this glacier.

and save his village. This is the ice? Yes. He also took a few breaks and chipped off some ice, which he gave meat to taste. He said this is pretty common. Actually, the local elders in the village think that eating glacial ice is very good for you,

especially for fevers. How does it taste? Super. Super. Tarek tells me that he's going to use all these measurements and photos to help compile a report, which he does every few months, to give his fellow villages about an hour's hike downstream,

information they need to know about the risks from the glacier, which is causing a constant series of floods that are threatening the village. When I was walking on the glacier, it feels pretty solid. It's a massive, huge hundreds of meters, fields of ice in front of me. but there's actually a lot of movement going on beneath and if you sit quietly in the quiet of the mountains you can actually hear a slight sound of trickling sometimes or a sudden rush of rocks falling

the ice is melting particularly in the hot summer seasons where that becomes a really big problem is when there's some kind of structure that has formed and the water melts into it, which then fills up and becomes a lake. The problem is that that lake can suddenly burst if the side of it becomes unsound or it overfills. That sends the entire contents of the lake,

often huge amounts of water, surging down off the glacier, down the valley in one go, often wiping out parts of villages in their path. The villages have grown up for hundreds of years, them and their ancestors, knowing that the glacial was there, and actually being really appreciative of it because it is the source of water

that means that they can undertake agriculture and grow fruit, which is what has supported them for centuries. But now the glacier also represents a source of real fear. A lot of people told me that they struggle to sleep at night because they're scared of a sudden flood that might come from a lake in the glacier. And many of them are struggling with damaged land, property, loss of livelihood due to previous floods. Yeah, thank you so much for agreeing to speak.

She says, thank you so much. I spoke with Zara, who is a mother of eight. She's around. 40 years old and she lives on a small plot of land in a village called Schultz. She still has real trauma and fear associated with glacial flooding as she lost her son about a year ago in a sudden flash flood. She spoke to us in her living room with some of her surviving children holding a photo of her son, who she said was washed away suddenly in the floods. They've never found his body, and she feels a deep sense of grief, she told me.

Sometimes tears coming into her eyes. She said that she gets really frightened whenever it rains, or she feels like there's maybe a risk of another flood, and she calls all of her other children and won't let them out of her sight. These floods are taking place all throughout South Asia. particularly Nepal, Bhutan, India, and of course, in Pakistan, where three major mountain ranges, the Hindukush, Himalayas and Karakoram intersect. In these areas, hundreds of glaciers are dotted around, many with villages at the base of them.

According to recent studies, over 15 million people worldwide are at risk of glacial lake flooding. About two million of those are in Pakistan. Development agencies and government officials are trying to address this. In Pakistan and a few other countries like Bhutan and Nepal, they're trying to work with local communities to build early warning systems that the communities themselves can control so they can be warned of the risks early and decide when to evacuate, as well as other adaptive processes like barrier walls

that help slow down water and reduce damage. But villages as well as climate adaptation specialists say there's just not enough adaptation funding to go around at the moment and it's very difficult for small rural communities like Kassanabad to access. The UN told us that the needs are enormous and that billions of dollars will be needed every year over the coming decades to help poor rural communities adapt. In villages like Kassanab,

Sanibad, they do have some measures they're taking, they're learning about the glacier, the risk of floods, they're monitoring it very closely, they're coming up with evacuation plans, and they're trying to reinforce their buildings and create barrier walls. But at the end of the day, all of it might not be enough, but the prospect of moving fills people with disbelief. Their families, their ancestors have lived here for 400 years. They lived in the area for a thousand years. Their ancestors are buried here. So for many, they just can't fathom the thought of moving. Do you worry about the glofts, the fludging, the glacial flooding? Yes, ma'am.

We become afraid of the flooding. We spoke to Tarik's children who were 14 and 15 and the little ones aged 4 years old. And the teenagers told us when we asked them, if they would like to move that although they would like to see the world and study, the thought of never being able to return to their home just filled them with sadness. They couldn't believe that they might not be with their community, their friends, their local customs if the constant flooding forces the village to move. What do you love about Hasanabad?

Our place is beautiful, and we can say we grow crops every year and we celebrate our festivals. with all of our neighbours. If you had to leave forever, if Hassanabad was gone, how would you feel? Life has flowed boredom. You would feel sad. Thanks to Charlotte Greenfield for her reporting.

Reuters World News is produced by Jonah Green, Tara Oaks, David Spencer, Christopher Waljasper and myself. Our senior producer is Carmel Crimmons, Lili D'Cretzer edits the show. Engineering and Sound Design by Josh Summer. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.